SAGINAW, MI — When Dawn Webb's three children were younger and found themselves in trouble, she would make them sit in a room by themselves and think about what they'd done.

Now, Webb said late this afternoon, Kenneth T. Bluew will have the chance to do the same thing — for the rest of his life.

That's because Bluew, 37, was convicted of first-degree premeditated murder in the Aug. 30, 2011, death of Webb's daughter, Jennifer. The charge carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. A sentencing date is not yet set.

Bluew, Dawn Webb said, will sit in a prison cell and have a chance every day to think about “squeezing the life out of my daughter.”

“He was way too smug, like he was going to get away with it,” Webb said of Bluew. “But he knew what he had done.”

After listening to 11 days of testimony and about three hours of closing arguments Thursday, Oct. 11, a jury of seven women and five men exited Saginaw County Circuit Judge Darnell Jackson's courtroom about 1:45 p.m. to begin deliberating. Jackson told them to take an hour to eat lunch, but it's unclear if the jurors deliberated while eating. The jurors declined comment as they exited the Saginaw County Governmental Center.

The jurors reached their verdict about 3:50 p.m., also convicting Bluew of assaulting a pregnant individual intentionally causing miscarriage or stillbirth of a fetus or embryo and two counts of possessing a firearm during the commission of a felony. Bluew, a Buena Vista Township police officer, was armed and on duty at the time of the killing.

Members of both Bluew's and Webb's family wept, albeit quietly, as they heard the verdict.

“I wanted to jump up and down and yell,” Dawn Webb said, noting that Jackson told those in the gallery to not have any emotional outbursts.

Webb and her family shared hugs and smiles of relief outside Saginaw County Prosecutor Michael D. Thomas' office.

“We can go around and mope and wail and carry on, but it's not going to bring her back,” Webb said.

Despite the relief, Webb added that “there are no winners in this at all.”

“I'll never know my grandson,” she said. “There are a lot of victims in this.”

Bluew and fellow Buena Vista Police Officer Tim Patterson found the 32-year-old Webb's body hanging by an extension cord from the roof rack of her Pontiac Aztek at North Outer and Hack in Buena Vista Township.

Bluew, who did not testify, told Michigan State Police Detective Sgts. Allan Ogg and Jason Teddy, now a lieutenant, that he had arrived at the scene just before Patterson did. Bluew said he found an “obvious suicide note” in Webb's purse and didn't recognize Webb until he saw her driver's license.

After two-plus hours of denying that he had sex with Webb and that he was the father of her child, whom Webb planned to name Braxton, Bluew finally admitted to having sex with her and acknowledged the possibility that he was the father when Teddy and Ogg asked to take a “buccal swab” from his inner cheek to obtain a DNA sample.

Lisa Ramos, a DNA expert from the state police, testified that a DNA test showed that Bluew was the father of the baby.

Saginaw County Medical Examiner Kanu Virani testified that he ruled Webb's death a homicide by carotid neck compression through the use of a choke hold and not a suicide by strangulation. Virani said his opinion was that the extension cord was tied around Webb's neck after she died.

Dawn Webb said today that part of her relief stemmed from the fact that “it's been a very long year” and thanked Thomas, Chief Assistant Prosecutor Jeffrey D. Stroud, and the state police investigators.

“They were very professional,” she said. “We knew that they were in our corner.”

Webb and her husband, Donald Webb, were surrounded by family and friends who, along with Bluew's family, packed the courtroom each day throughout the trial.

“She had so many friends,” Webb said of her daughter. “We received support from Sweden, Hawaii, Venezuela — friends that she had who have moved away.

“I don't know how to thank everybody,” she continued. “The support was overwhelming.”